CURATOR

A pinboard by

PINBOARD SUMMARY

Genetics show that our species bred with other hominins with outcomes that are still visible today.

In 10 seconds? As Homo sapiens left Africa and dispersed throughout the world they encountered and interbred with other human species, today extinct. These hybridization events may have boosted our evolution and the issue of these encounters is still visible in our DNA.

Don’t believe it? Genetic studies have shown that modern humans met, and even mixed, with other human species that inhabited different regions of the globe. Namely, with Neanderthals in Europe and Asia; Denisovans in the Himalayas and Southeast Asia; Heidelbergensis in Africa; and possibly Floresiensis in Indonesia.

How were those other human species? Neanderthals were stronger than Homo sapiens, had bigger cranial capacities, so probably bigger brains, made stone tools, used fire and it seems they even self-medicated. Denisovans were probably as robust as Neanderthals, but not much is known about their morphology. On the other hand, Heidelbergensis were taller than Neanderthals but had smaller brains, and Homo floresiensis, also referred to as hobbits, were much smaller (about 3.5 feet) and had small brains.

And how did these encounters boost our evolution? Recent results suggest that hybridization between Homo sapiens and other human species may have enabled adaptation to out-of-Africa environments, by providing an important reservoir of advantageous alleles and allowing a faster rate of adaptation than with mutation and selection alone. For instance, it has increased the diversity of the immune repertoire of contemporary Europeans, affecting preferentially responses to viral challenges.